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It may seem like a bold statement, but it really isn’t. If you have at least heard of German Functionalism (Katharina Reiss, Christiane Nord, Hans Vermeer and others) you will definitely agree with it. There is no difference between translation and transcreation. Because translation IS transcreation. As a translator you don’t merely reproduce a source text, you don’t mechanically transcribe a source text into your target language (you’re not Google Translate), but produce a completely new text in your target language based on a source text, and on several other crucial coordinates. These coordinates are provided in your translation… brief. You can’t possibly properly translate a text without a translation brief. You always need to know who your target audience is, what medium will be used for your target text and what your goal is. Because your final goal as a translator is not to produce a target text but to achieve something by means of your target text.

Quite often, you are asked to maintain the form, style and structure of your source text, like when you’re translating a user manual. Your purpose in this case is to help your target audience use a certain device, so apparently you’re not operating very many changes. ‘But you don’t need a brief for that and you don’t really need to be creative’, you might say. As far as the brief is concerned, some of the information is self-explanatory, it’s true. I mean, no-one expects you to translate the manual in the form of a poem. You also know that you will have to explain the functioning of your device to your target audience. Nonetheless, it is very important to know who your target recipient is (a professional? a layman?). This information might now always be self-implied. You would need your client to tell you that. About creativity, that’s completely untrue! You cannot possibly translate without being creative (if that were true, Google Translate would be the best translator in the world). No two languages are alike. Sometimes, sentences, but also paragraphs, should be rewritten, rephrased. The order of your information might also change – based on the culturally approved model of the user manual. You might need to replace certain idiomatic expressions with equivalent functional phrases in your target language. An example that comes to mind is ‘Congratulations on purchasing this device’. Romanians would react quite strangely if somebody congratulated them for purchasing something. You might want to thank them, but not congratulate them. You have to do anything and everything to help your target audience use the device.

In advertising, because your fellow citizens react to different messages or because their buying behaviours are very different, the target text sometimes (but not always) needs to be completely rewritten. In this case, you use the source text as a guide. It can help you understand what the brand aimed to achieve in the source environment. You are probably expected to achieve the same goals in the target audience (anyway, in such a situation the brief would be much more elaborate). And it is up to you to choose the strategy. You might have to change everything (pictures, text, tagline) or preserve the message and structure of the original. It all depends on what works and what not.

It has been assumed (wrongly, I might add) that translation is some sort of a transcoding process whereby only the language is changed, therefore a new improved concept was deemed necessary, and this is transcreation. In fact, between translation and transcreation there is only a difference of degree (of how much change is needed in your target text in order to achieve your goal). Structurally speaking, the process is the same, because whether you translate or transcreate, your approach must always be target-oriented, never source-oriented.

If you’re a multinational company seeking translation and localization services for dozens of languages, then this article is not for you. The logistics needed by such large projects can be effectively handled by large translation agencies. But if you are a small or medium enterprise looking to translate your content into several languages, choosing a freelance professional or a small translation shop might actually be a good idea. Here’s why:

1. You can have better control over the outcome and be more closely involved in the process

When you have too many intermediaries involved in the translation process, it is more difficult to handle the communication process with the actual translator simply because things get „lost in translation”. Reversely, being able to establish a direct contact with the translator will help solve translation issues more effectively on the one hand, and obtain a target text truly suited to your needs on the other hand.

2. The revision of the target text will be more thorough

Big translation agencies usually implement a good quality management process. However, their anonymous approach to revision and proofreading (the original translator doesn’t know who is performing the revision/proofreading) may have „side effects”. This may be partly due to the perception that the proofreader’s main role is to assess the original translator, and since assessing a text is a subjective activity, sometimes unnecessary changes may be implemented. Judging the necessity of changes can be hard for a project manager who doesn’t speak the target language, which means that a third party might get involved and things can get a bit complicated.

But if the translator and proofreader know each other and collaborate, they know that they should focus on the quality of the target text. The aim of the revision process is to obtain the best possible end result.

3. It’s cheaper

You won’t have the middleman involved, which means you can save a couple of bucks. Even if you need a team of freelance translators, you won’t have to pay extra, because they don’t usually charge a commission.

4. Freelance translators have excellent networking skills

If you need your content translated to multiple languages, freelance translators can always find colleagues eager to take on work. And their collaboration will be smooth and efficient.

5. Better consistency throughout projects

Working with the same translator will help you to achieve a better intertextual consistency. Although translation memories help maintaining a good level of consistency for your texts regardless of the number and identity of translators involved, having the same one or two translators work on your accounts will clearly ensure a higher degree of cohesion.

6. Better terminology management

Again, having the same person work on your projects will enhance terminology consistency. Besides terminology tools, your translator will also rely on their memory, thus being able to choose the right term according to context. In addition, terminology can be negotiated directly with the translator.

7. You would be supporting a healthy business environment

By choosing to collaborate with a freelance translator or a small agency you will invest in a sustainable and healthy business model. Instead of focusing solely on profits and cost-cutting, freelancers are really passionate about their jobs and their main aim is to do their job really well. They will also be highly motivated to maintain a good relationship with direct clients.

8. You always know who is responsible for the quality of the target text

You always know who to blame if things go wrong. Which means that the translator will always try to provide the best services. It is their reputation at stakes after all.

9. It’s faster

Having less people involved in the process, the communication will be quicker. You get to talk and negotiate directly with the lead translator. Upon completion of the task, after the translation underwent revision, the translator will forward the completed job directly to you. Thus, you might be saving some precious time.

10. Because… you can

It is very easy nowadays to find freelance translators for all language combination. Most of them have a webpage, a social media page or a blog. You can easily search and perform a thorough selection based on their expertise and the services they can offer.

It should be no surprise to anyone that worldview affects language. More precisely, every culture chooses its own way of denominating concepts according to various contextual factors (e.g. the landscape they inhabit, the habits they developed over the years, the geo-political context, history, climate etc.). This is why word-for-word translation never works! I had some floating-islands […]

If you don’t have the time to watch it (although I urge you to), the video is about how a slight change in the design of a bicycle will confuse you so much that you won’t be able to ride a bike anymore. And in order to ‘relearn’ how to do it, you somehow have to forget to ride a regular bike. Destin proves this is possible but it takes a very long time. He managed to learn to ride the ‘new’ bike in about nine months, but doing so, he forgot how to ride a regular bike. What’s interesting is that a child is able to do this a lot quicker (apparently, it took his son about 3 months). The conclusion of this exercise is that knowing does not equal understanding. Learning to learn a bike is an ‘intuitive’ process, meaning that your brain does the job for you and you don’t really know what it actually does.

What struck me about this short video is that language acquisition works in the same way. The acquisition of one’s mother tongue, that is. Just think about it. If somebody asks you about a certain grammar rule in your native language, do you know the answer instantly? You would probably have to think a bit. You would try to infer the rule from examples. And that is because you speak the language intuitively, the whole acquisition process that dates back to your early childhood was purely intuitive. At a basic level, you don’t even need to study grammar in school in order to speak your mother tongue. And if you hear a new word, you instantly know what to do with it (how to integrate it in a sentence, how to form the plural etc.). This is another case of ‘knowing without necessarily understanding’. You don’t know how your brain manages your native language.

This explains why it is so difficult to learn a foreign language after you have already acquired your mother tongue. The intellectual mechanisms involved are completely different. When you study a foreign language at a later age (but even as early as 8-9 years of age), you employ your analytical skills and not your intuitive skills. You constantly compare the words, structures and rules of the new language to those of your own. This means that speaking will involve less spontaneity and more ‘awareness’. You will not be able to actually ‘feel’ that particular language and you will always be aware that it is not actually yours. Furthermore, there will always be a certain degree of inertia which will prevent you from speaking it at a native level (think of accents, syntax, fluency). Sure, there are gifted people who manage to reach a near-native or even native level, but the majority will always struggle to a greater or lesser extent.

Clearly, the mental processes employed in learning to ride a bike are much less complex than those of learning a language. This is probably why, if you try hard enough (apparently very hard), you can instruct your brain to re-learn to ride a modified bike and thus forget to ride the regular bike. With languages it is much more difficult – if not impossible. There would probably need to be a traumatic event (God forbid) in order to wipe out one’s native language from one’s brain. But probably if you could erase the knowledge of your original mother tongue, you would be able to acquire a foreign language intuitively and thus speak it as your own.

În numele echipei de cadre didactice a Departamentului de Limbi Moderne Aplicate, a Masteratului European de Traductologie-Terminologie și a Masteratului European de Interpretare de Conferință din cadrul Facultății de Litere a Universității Babeș-Bolyai din Cluj-Napoca,

Procrastination is one of the most feared omens in the professional world. I mean how can procrastination be good when it may prevent you to deliver your projects on time? Well, I will dare say that sometimes procrastination can help! Take the following situation: you have just begun work on a 20,000 word project and you’re still in the accommodation phase. You’re trying various approaches, you’re getting acquainted with the terminology and language of the project and, admit it, progress is quite slow. But then again, in this stage you’re not very pressed by the deadline. And as you blissfully type along, sipping from your coffee cup – maybe music playing in the background – bang! something hits you! There’s a word, a phrase or even a sentence you can’t figure out. Of course, your first instinct is to think. And you think. Then you think some more… No, still can’t figure it out. Next, you’re trying various approaches, you write down a couple of variants, but you’re still not happy with the outcome. Trying all these techniques will just make you frustrated. You will not be able to come up with anything good because as you grow angrier your focusing capacity declines. So why not try a different technique? I have, and it has always worked! Why not get away from your desk, maybe log out of your computer and go cook something, or read from your favourite novel, or even sleep on it? Whenever I did this, the solution just naturally appeared when I resumed work after a couple of hours/the next day. So there, procrastination can help you!

Today, I’m going local with this fun, hip Romanian beer brand. This is a tiny, boutique-like, high-quality beer company doing business almost exclusively in their local area (the city of Timișoara). Their name translates into English as ”The Beer Clinic” and, needless to say, everything about this brand is related to the medical paradigm. Their product lines […]

I stumbled upon this very interesting brand one day and I thought I’d share with you. Surprisingly enough, The Infinite Monkey Theorem is a wine brand based in Denver, Colorado. Why I like the brand: because it has the guts to challenge the entire traditional concept of wine-making. The company don’t have their own a vineyard, they don’t care […]

Because I’ve been a brand enthusiast for quite a while now, I decided to write every week about hip, inspirational brands. I will judge them by their statement, visual identity and philosophy, and not by the intrinsic quality of their products or services (except for the ones that I actually experienced). Also, it’s not my […]